The organizing and regulation of mountain guiding in Scandinavia 1820–2016, with a glance at the Alps

In this article, we study how mountain guiding was organized and regulated in Scandinavia and the Alps between 1820 and 2015 and focus on the most important di erences and similarities in Scandinavia, and between Scandinavia and the Alps. We conclude that Switzerland and Chamonix (France) represent two di erent systems in the Alps during the nineteenth century. However, through the emergence of national and international guide unions the regulation of mountain guiding in the Alps today appears uni ed, with a close connection between national regulation and mountain guide unions. In Scandinavia, Norway and Sweden historically had similar practices organizing and regulating mountain guiding, where a relatively strong layman tradition emerged during the 1960s and 1970s. In 2008, legal decisions led Sweden to change its system to match the Alp model, while Norway held on to the layman tradition. This leaves mountain guiding in Norway as a distinctly less regulated eld than in France, and Switzerland, as in and Sweden.